


a whole new world

by pasdecoeur



Series: superbat works [1]
Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Aladdin (1992) Fusion, Fluff and Crack, Idiots in Love, M/M, god who gave THEM capes, mutual dumbasses in love, that's the whole vibe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-11
Packaged: 2019-09-13 21:59:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16900593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pasdecoeur/pseuds/pasdecoeur
Summary: "Thisis what the Royal Flush Gang wanted to steal?" Dick asked nobody in particular. "A crummy oldcoin?"[[Or, Bruce accidentally acquires a genie, and Dick decides he'd actuallyreallylike an extra parent.]]





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> so i rewatched aladdin. (and sang along to all the singy bits, good god, what have i become.)
> 
> this story is complete, and extremely un-beta'ed. will be updated every few days.

“ _This_ is what the Royal Flush Gang wanted to steal?” Dick asked, mostly talking to himself, after they got back to the Cave. “A crummy old coin?”

“Hey, come on, kid,” said a slightly hurt voice from behind him, and Dick--did  ** _not_** scream, because Dick was  ** _not_** a kid, thank you very much, that was a _yelp_ , a very manly, very non-embarrassing yelp. He turned around slowly, and the guy said to him, frowning, “that's not nice,” with a face like the cover of a GQ magazine and also a body like the cover of a GQ magazine, and Dick said, “Wow, you are _incredibly_ blue,” because Dick’s mouth hated him a _lot._

That was also about when Bruce decided to step out of the showers in the Cave, damp and a little flushed, towel over his shoulders and another wrapped low around his hips, oh god WHY was Dick noticing that, WHY, and said, “Robin. Stop bothering the genie.”

“The _what now?!”_ Dick screeched, roughly at the same time as the GENIE said, “I’ve got a name, you know.”

* * *

 

  


Bruce didn't seem to care that they had a houseguest now, but Dick did. Dick cared _very much._

“Can you do _anything?”_ Dick whispered, while Bruce angrily did things on the Batcomputer.

“Yes.”

“Can you make volcanoes erupt?”

“Yes.”

“Can you make _stars_ explode?”

“Yes.”

“Can you make all the air in the world purple?”

The genie looked at him strangely. “You're a weird kid, you know that?”

Dick beamed at him. “Yep.”

The genie almost smiled back.

* * *

 

  


The genie started to accompany them on their patrols. Bruce didn't question it. Didn't even acknowledge it, except to say, “If you're going to continue being that shade of blue, we aren't going to get any work done tonight,” and the genie had sneered, right in Bruce’s face, “I’m sorry, was that a **_wish,_** Master? Would you like me to be _less_ blue?”

And Dick had tugged at the corner of the genie’s bright red cape, and said, “There’s a deal going down on the docks, G. They're buying little girls, and they're gonna auction ‘em off. We gotta help ‘em. We gotta keep a low profile.”

The genie’s eyes went wide then, right before he disappeared, though Dick could still make out a hazy outline, where he had been, an impression of scarlet and navy and really good shoulders.

“Better?” the genie had murmured to Bruce, and Bruce had grunted in a way that Dick knew meant ' _I don't constantly want to throttle you anymore'._

So, high praise, then.

* * *

 

 

Busting up the human traffickers went a little sideways, but not by much--

Right up until there was a man shoving a gun under Dick’s jaw, and Bruce was too far to help, and the genie roared, “Batman! NOW!”

Bruce nodded and the genie blazed into action, slapping the gun out of the attackers hands, punching out the rest of them, taking gunfire like it literally didn't even matter, cuffing them to the walls methodically before he grabbed Dick, running big, warm hands over his face, his shoulders, just like Bruce always did, murmuring, “Are you okay? Are you hurt?” about fifty times in a row.

“M’fiiiiine,” Dick grumbled into the genie’s shoulder. “Lil’ woozy. C’n we go home?”

The genie tucked one hand carefully around the back of his head, patted gently. “Yeah, Robin. Let's go home.” Dick peeked a look at Batman right before he closed his eyes. He had the funniest look on his face.

* * *

 

 

 

Dick woke up a little later, and realized he was being tucked into bed. “Bruce?” he asked sleepily.

“No, it's me.”

“Oh hey G,” Dick mumbled.

“Hey, bud.”

“Did we get the bad guys?”

“We sure did.”

Dick wriggled under the quilt, and felt something warm curl in his chest. “Good. Um. Genie? Can you _really_ do anything? At all?”

“Not really,” the genie whispered. “Can't kill, can't take free will, can't grant more’n three wishes… Can't bring anybody back from the dead.”

“Oh. C-cause my parents…”

“I’m sorry, Dick.”

“And Bruce's too.”

“I _can't_. I’m so sorry.” He sounded heartbroken.

Dick’s chest did an awful squeezy thing, so he said, “S’okay,” patting the genie’s hand. “I still like you. Hey G. You got a name?”

“Kal, of House El.”

Dick grinned. “Thassa weird name,” he said into his pillow. Someone was stroking his hair. It felt nice.

“My friends call me Clark.”

“Kay. Night night, Clark. Thanks for savin’ my life.”

The hand stopped moving, and Dick bumped his head up until it started back again, humming contentedly. And right on the edge of sleep, he thought he heard Clark whisper, “Anytime, little bird.”

* * *

 

 

 

Clark waited until Dick had fallen asleep to leave the room, drifting over the floor, only to find Bruce, sat in the hallway, back to a wall, head tipped back, eyes shut, exhausted.

He must've felt Clark’s presence, because his eyes fluttered open, the blue faded to an inky black in the dark.

Their gaze met in the dark. And for a moment, it was quiet.

“You saved his life,” Bruce said. It was the first time Bruce had really spoken to him, since the moment he'd taken the coin, and something vicious and hot curled up in Clark. What business did Bruce have, taking a _kid_ out to there, to deal with _monsters?_

“You made a wish,” Clark said harshly. “Two more to go. _Master.”_

Bruce’s eyes widened, like he’d been slapped, and Clark streamed out, out of the Manor, out of the grounds, out of the Earth’s atmosphere, and it didn't feel good at all.

* * *

 

  
  


But Clark always came with them, after that, an extra pair of eyes, invisible in the sky high above. Alfred handed him a comm one night, before patrol, and Clark got real quiet, staring at the round, flesh-colored pad, curling his fingers over it carefully, like it was something fragile and precious.

Dick watched him turn to Bruce nervously, and Clark said, “Thank you,” his voice rough and soft, a little uneven.

Bruce nodded, once, and then said, “Air support would be useful,” because Bruce was an _asshole._

Dick sighed. They were _never_ gonna get Clark to stay, at this rate.

* * *

 

  
  


Clark discovered superpowers a few weeks after his coin was found again. There was that kid in the red suit in Central City, there was the guy calling himself Green Lantern and picking fights with the USAF down the West Coast, the immortal demi-goddess from Themyscira who had just had a sit-down with the _President._

He discovered Bruce also had a superpower. It was called Not Fucking Talking About Anything _Ever_ and it was driving Clark insane in a way four hundred years trapped in a _coin_ hadn't.

“I don't get you,” he snapped at Bruce, one day, when the sun was inching over the horizon, and Bruce was packing it in, ready to go to bed when the rest of Gotham was waking up.

“Most people don't,” Bruce replied equably.

“You know I’ll _go,_ right? If you just made your two remaining wishes? You don't need to tolerate me, like I’m bad case of herpes or whatever, just _ask_ and I’ll grant it, and I’ll go; you don't _need to--_ ” Clark sighed, and scrubbed his face. “God.”

Bruce was looking at him with a very strange look on his face. “If I wanted you to go away,” he said slowly, as if speaking to someone very stupid, “I would've wished for three dollars the moment we met. Or, a dollar, thrice. Whatever.”

“Oh.” His cheeks burned hotly, and something tight and coiled and incandescent was spreading through his chest, bubbling like champagne through his veins, a roar in his ears like sea waves.

Bruce pulled off the cowl with an impatient tug, unlatched the cape, and tugged off the gauntlets, and all Clark could do was just stand there, too hot, heart beating too fast, feeling suddenly, _painfully_ human.

He was still there, when Bruce returned in a blue-t-shirt and--and _jeans,_ God, and Clark felt like a butterfly pinned to a board under that icy, crystalline stare. “Breakfast?” he asked Clark, quietly. “I think Alfred’s making pancakes.”

Clark nodded, and followed after him, fighting not to stand too close, and wondered how he hadn't how beautiful Bruce was, before today.


	2. Chapter 2

It went on like that. Easy. Uncomplicated.

((Clark stewing in poorly repressed lust, while Bruce continued being a good dad, and also painfully heroic.))

Gotham had been quiet for a while now, too, and Dick tired himself out taking on a couple of bank robbers one night, before Bruce swept in and knocked them out.

“Good work, Robin,” he said afterwards, deep and sort of impassive, and Robin flushed with pleasure, running up to Clark when he alighted on the pavement.

“Did you see? Did you see?” he crowed, taking a running leap into Clark’s arms, “He was like _AGGH!_ And I was like _Ha! Take_ ** _that,_** _foul villain!_ And then they were like _noooo!_ And I was like-” but Clark was already laughing, and Dick could feel it vibrating through him, like standing next to a bass speaker at a rock concert. He curled up against the big S, adrenaline crashing fast, making it harder to stay awake.

“I’ll take him home,” he heard Clark say, probably to Bruce, and then they were taking off, into the night sky, wind rippling gently through his hair, high, high above Gotham's spires.

Dick squirmed a little, before he settled, Clark’s arms tightening around him.  
He’d never been afraid of heights.

* * *

 

Clark found Bruce waiting outside Dick’s bedroom, the way he always did when Clark tucked him in, Batsuit off. Alfred didn't approve mixing their downstairs clothes with their upstairs lives, and Alfred ran all their lives, so.

“He asleep?”

Clark nodded. Bruce’s shirt was unbuttoned down to his chest, like he’d put it on in a hurry, and Clark’s throat had gone suspiciously dry.

“Thank you,” Bruce murmured, and Clark shrugged. “He’s a good kid.”

It was the first time he’d seen Bruce smile, at home, when there was no one else watching, when he wasn't playing a part. A little curl of his lips, just at the corner, eyes crinkling, as he looked off to the side.

“Yeah, he is,” Bruce replied, soft and proud in a way that Clark has never heard before, and it coursed through him, like a warm shot of whiskey, fiery and _good,_ and he almost smiled back.

* * *

 

The quiet lulled them into a false sense of security, so when everything went horribly sideways, with the Joker and Harley Quinn breaking out of Arkham, and dosing the town with an aerosolized toxin that turned them into a vicious, bloodthristy mob, hungry for violence, it caught them almost entirely by surprise. Almost.

Clark took to the skies without a word, the moment they heard the alarms go off, scanning for Joker, while Bruce and Dick hit the streets, staving off violence, launching an adapted KO gas through the city once they had determined it didn't have any side-effects.

“The violence is spreading to Crime Alley,” Clark reported, and Bruce copied, switched to the feed from STAR Labs, where they working on an antidote, caught the tail end of one of the scientists saying, “We’ve only just determined that the toxin is organic in origin. Some kind of plant extract.”

“Thanks,” Bruce replied.

“That’s useful?” the scientist asked, sounding faintly surprised.

“Mm.” Bruce cut the feed. “Robin, I need you to go say hi to a couple of old friends.”

Dick, who knew instinctively what Bruce meant, scowled. “ _Hell_ no.”

Bruce didn't grin, but--okay, he did.

* * *

 

 

 

“Got him,” came Clark’s voice over the comms. “Joker and Quinn. Toy store, on the corner of 53rd and Weston. Do you read?”

“We’re on our way,” Bruce replied, as he and Dick swung into the Batmobile, and roared down the emptied street.

“Batman,” Clark said urgently. “He’s dangerous. He definitely has a contingency planned, please, you gotta let me take him out, just make a wish--”

“No,” Bruce growled back, and cut off Clark’s comm, feeling the weight of Dick’s stare heavy on him.

“He can help, Batman,” Dick said, and he wasn't angry, the way any reasonable person would be, or even a little irritated, because Dick trusted Batman with the blind faith of a preacher standing next to the son of God.

“Yes,” Bruce agreed quietly. “Twice more. And then?”

“And then he’s--gone,” Dick finished for him, softly horrified. “Forever. Oh.”

Bruce didn't bother replying, and punched down the gas pedal a little harder. Clark was right. The Joker was dangerous, and Bruce couldn't afford to be… distracted. They had a job to do.

* * *

 

Harley was perched in the Joker’s lap, her legs tossed over the arm of a plastic make-believe throne, long ropes of glittery plastic necklaces looped around her neck, wearing a shiny tiara that matched the Joker’s crown.

The storekeeper lay at their feet, his corpse cold already, eyes bug-eyes with horror, chest opened from throat to belly, blood and entrails soaked deep into the sky blue carpet below.

“Bats!” he crowed, when Bruce entered, crashing through the roof, avoiding the guards outside, while Dick shot them up with tranq darts. “You came! Didn't I tell you he’d come to our little party, darling?”

“You sure did, Mistah J,” Harley crooned. “Heya Batsy!”

“The toxin’s been neutralized, Joker,” Bruce said, softly dangerous. “The GCPD are outside. Don't make this difficult.”

“I _have_ missed our talks, but so sorry, Batman,” and Bruce heard the thrum of static, before the walls exploded, and electricity rained over him, the staccato beat of machine gun fire, pain tearing through him like knives, ripping, hideous, and he barely heard Joker say, “I hear you’ve got an angel on your shoulder, these days. I think it's time we met!”

* * *

 

Bruce woke up, a pair of bright green eyes peering at him.

“Hey, lover,” Selina murmured, and Bruce groaned.

“You took your time,” he muttered, struggling up to his feet. “Where’s Ivy?”

“Oh, torturing the Joker in one of her shitty greenhouses for stealing her precious plants, I think.”

“Catwoman….”

“What?” she asked, hands on her hips, while Bruce painfully levered to his feet, knees popping like an old man’s. “You can't rope villains into your little schemes, and not expect us to _act_ like villains, pal.”

Bruce straightened, and then barely bit back a shout, pain slicing sharply through his ribs, a livewire hurt, felt something warm, wet, slide against his skin, under the Batsuit, saw the gleam of wet leather, before stumbling down to his knees, head spinning.

Clark was there in a second, dropping through the hole in the ceiling, and Selina was saying, “Holy shit, I thought he just crazy-talking about the guardian angel,” but the whole world had started to get fogged up around the edges, and Clark was whispering, “Please, _please_ , let me help, let me help you now, god, don't do this, _don't,_ make a fucking _wish_ you stubborn idiot,” and his eyes were so blue, glittering like an ocean, and Bruce smiled, and felt Clark’s hands, stroking desperate lines down his neck, heard the wail of ambulances in the distances, good work, Robin, and he whispered, “Hell no.”

* * *

 

When he came to this time, it was in the Cave, in the bedroom just beneath the training area, the cave within the cave, the place where he wasn't Batman, or Bruce Wayne, or anyone but himself. Everything felt bright and soft and far away.

Clark was perched on the edge of the bed, jaw tight with anger. Bruce wanted to touch that tense, angry muscle, wanted to put his mouth over it, _wanted wanted wanted._

“You could've died,” Clark whispered.

“It was a through-and-through, Clark. I know what a flesh wound feels like. People don't die from flesh wounds.”

“Yes, they do!” Clark hissed back.

“What would happen,” Bruce asked curiously, unfazed, “if I died? To you?”

“It- You-- You're _not_ going to die,” Clark said angrily, harsh and guttural and fiercely possessive.

“ _Eventually_ , Clark, not next Tuesday,” Bruce said, rolling his eyes. “What happens then?”

Clark paused. “I don't… I don't know. Everyone always uses up their wishes, and I go back into the coin.”

“So there's no way to be… free?”

“If you wished it, I--yes. But no one's ever wished for that either.” Clark stared at him. “Is that what you want? For me to leave?”

And Bruce said, “ _No_ ,” the word ripped from him, and it caught Bruce unawares too, this violent longing, this thing that roared to life in his chest, “No, I don't-- I want you to-- I want--”

Something in Clark’s eyes shifted, softened, and almost tentatively, he was dipping down, brushing his lips against Bruce's, soft and careful, so quick Bruce barely felt it, and he grabbed onto Clark desperately, gripped the back of his neck, and opened his mouth, and then Clark was kissing him, laughing, running his hands through Bruce's hair, climbing over him, slotting their bodies perfectly together, heat and want colliding between their tongues, kissing like it was breathing, that important, that necessary.

It was.

* * *

 

Bruce took a moment to catch his breath, afterwards, Clark curled up by his side, trying to wrap his mind around this phenomenally powerful cosmic being, curled up in his bed, an arm draped possesively over his chest. “I didn't expect that,” he said quietly, and Clark didn't reply.

Bruce looked to him, and--and laughed. “He sleeps. Of course.”

He closed his eyes. Thought about the look in Clark’s eyes just before they kissed, knows he’ll never forget it already, knows it's seared into him as brightly as the sharpest moments of his life, feels the shift of it in his bones.

 _‘I want--’_ he’d said. _‘I want--’_ and Clark had… understood.

And the warmth turns to ice. He looks at Clark again, heart thumping faster, harder, horror numbing his mind. _I want,_ Bruce had said, and Clark had given Bruce what he wanted. _I want,_ and Bruce had _taken,_ a second wish, granted as easily as the first, and oh god.

Oh god.

What had he done?

_What had he done?_


	3. Chapter 3

Bruce walked out of the room as if in a dream. Tapped in the code to the vault, let the system scan his heartbeat, his retina, his palmprint, and picked the coin out from its inner secondary vault. Faded, gold, the insignia smudged and unreadable.

Such a little thing, and yet…

“Three wishes,” he whispered to himself. “Okay. Here's the third one. I wish you were free.”

For a brief moment, it almost felt like the coin glowed, growing warm in his palm, but the feeling passed soon enough, and soon, it was cool once more, a harmless little hunk of metal. John Constantine would know what to do with it.

Bruce clenched his fist, savoring the way its edges cut into his hand, the brief, sharp pain, before he slid in into his pocket. He’d call Constantine later. He would.

He left the Cave quietly, left Clark, left what felt like all of his soul, and walked into a cold, empty bedroom abovestairs, and wondered what the hell was the point of being Batman, if he couldn't even stop himself from hurting the ones he--

* * *

  
  
  


“Where is he?” DIck asked breathlessly, bursting into Bruce’s room, hopping onto his bed, shoving at his shoulder. “Bruce, Bruce, wake up, I looked everywhere, he wasn’t at breakfast, he’s gone, he’s gone--”

“I wished for his freedom.”

Dick went still. “His… freedom.”

Bruce got up, careful not to jostle Dick, whose eyes were wide, and his little face pale, and awfully, unnervingly still. “He told me he was trapped by the coin. Imprisoned. So I wished for his freedom.”

“But… But I thought he would-- I thought he’d _stay._ ” There was a shine in Dick’s eyes that twisted Bruce’s gut. He did this. He did this to Clark, to Dick, he always did this, ruin good things, always, every fucking _time._

“I’m sorry, Dick,” Bruce whispered, and tucked his head against his chest, ran a hand down his shivering back, and said, confessed, “I wanted him to stay too.”

* * *

  
  
  


“It’s a stupid name.”

“What is?” Bruce asked, patiently. There was a black frown on Dick’s face, flushed with anger, nostrils flared and jaw gritted hard. A newspaper slid down the breakfast table to Bruce, while Alfred poured him his fourth cup of coffee.

“ _Superman_ ,” Dick snapped. “What kind of self-absorbed jackass calls himself _Superman?_ It’s like he skipped Nietzsche completely.”

“Language, Master Richard,” Alfred murmured, and Dick apologized, but Bruce was barely listening.

He carefully regulated his breathing, examined the photo on the front page of the Gazette - a Metropolis skyscraper on fire, a red-blue blur in the air, silhouetted against the sunset sky - let himself look for a long, terrible minute, and then pushed the paper aside.

“Bruce?” Dick asked. “You okay, dude?”

“Don’t call me dude." Bruce fought to keep voice calm, slightly distracted. There was a roar in his ears so loud he could hardly hear his own voice. "Alfred, I think it’s time to tour the South American subsidiaries, don’t you?”

“Master Richard does need to brush up on his Portuguese,” Alfred replied sotto voce, while Dick squawked in protest, Superman entirely forgotten.

“Excellent.” He rose from the table, coffee mug in hand. There was a bottle of Blue Label in the Cave, wasn’t there? It was five o'clock _somewhere._ “Let Lucius Fox know.”

* * *

  
  
  


But a continent and a half wasn’t enough space, not when the other person was a being of near-infinite cosmic power, and Bruce discovered it the hard way, when the engine on their jet exploded into flames, halfway over the Atlantic. The in-flight entertainment screens all went staticky at the same moment, before a live feed popped up, the Joker and Harley curled up together in front of a fireplace, Poison Ivy lounging by the mantelpiece, and Bruce’s heart sank.

“Get the chutes,” he told Dick softly. “Strap Alfred in. When the plane drops to 9,000 feet, I’ll disengage the doors’ locking mechanism. Jump. Okay?”

Dick was wide-eyed, white as a sheet, but he obeyed on pure-driven instinct, and Bruce turned back to the screen: “...the poison should have killed your pilots by now, and your second engine is seconds away from imminent DOOM! I hear you and the Bats are such good friends, Mr. Wayne, which makes me curious: if angels watch over our dark knight, do they watch over you too?” He cackled happily. “Curiosity left the cat alive, Mr. Wayne: and now it’s coming for you,” and then lounged forward, nails digging viciously into Harley's bare thigh, while he screamed, “Pray, Mr. Wayne! PRAY FOR YOUR ANGELS!”

The screen went dark, and Bruce stumbled out of his seat, gripping the seatback hard, as the plane started to nosedive, diving forward, downward, into the pilots’ cockpit, where the captain and his first officer were both glassy-eyed, dead, pink-tinged foam dribbling out of their open mouths. There was a muted thud, a screech of metal against metal, and Bruce watched in horror as the second engine gave away.

The altimeter was dropping rapidly, and Bruce hung on, plugged his phone into the modified console, punched in rapid strings of code, but--

“Bruce,” Dick called out, not rushed, not scared, simply urgent, good lad, “we’re at ten thousand feet!”

Goddammit. Bruce re-entered the code.

_< <Authorization denied. Error #999402>>_

Override. Access key. Manual control.

_< <Authorization denied. Error #999402>>_

Fuck, fuck, fuck. “Bruce, eight thousand five! We need to deploy chutes before one thousand max, or it won’t matter whether we’re inside the plane, or out!”

* * *

  
  
  


 

There had to be something, there had to--

Bruce scrambled frantically, the plane plummeting towards the earth, ever closer, and Bruce glanced over his shoulder, saw Dick stumble into Alfred’s arms, saw the old butler hold him close, and this couldn’t be it, this couldn’t be how he died, why did he always do this, why did Bruce always _destroy_ everything, _a poison,_ that old voice whispered in his head, _you’re a poison in the lives of everyone you love, cut them all away, save them from yourself, Bruce Wayne--_

He slipped his hand into his pocket, around the little gold coin, and, for no particular reason, he _wished._

Not that he could be saved, but that Dick and Alfred could, that he hadn’t made his second, terrible wish at all, that he hadn’t lost Clark, that he hadn’t betrayed him--

“Bruce.” Dick had whispered it, but Bruce heard him, because the rushing roar of the wind had disappeared, the vertiginous thrill of the drop along with it.

They weren’t falling.

Bruce looked out the window, saw the horizon, distant and _flat._

Both the engines were still out, and they were still hemorrhaging fuel from the severed lines, and they weren’t _flying._ So why weren’t they falli- _oh._

They touched down on the coast of Guyana, on a lonely stretch of beach, white sands and blue seas, and there was a screech of metal as the door was-- _ripped_ away. Bruce stood where he was, paralyzed with a toxic mess of grief and guilt and heady longing, as a dark head poked into the cabin, a little smile curving up that painfully familiar mouth.

“Hey," Clark said. "Somebody here needed a lift?” and laughed easily when Dick whooped like he was at a fucking Nets game and jumped into his arms.

* * *

  
  


 

He found Clark standing at the shoreline, a little later, feet bare, letting the sea lap at his toes.

Bruce had abandoned his shoes and jacket a while back, rolled up the sleeves, while they waited for the Guyanese authorities to send some kind of transport out to where they were.

“Thank you,” Bruce said quietly. “I… can never repay you, for what you did today.”

Clark’s jaw tensed. His eyes still faced out to the sea. “That’s not why I did it.”

“Yes,” Bruce said, “Of course. I didn’t mean to imply--If there is anything I can ever do--”

“Bruce,” Clark said sharply, “I literally grant wishes. If I wanted something…”

“Right.” Bruce closed his eyes. “I’m--I just wanted to say thank you. So. Thank you. I’ll… go.”

He turned to leave, and Clark said, then, “Was it so bad?”

Bruce paused. “I beg your pardon?”

Clark still wouldn’t look at him. “Was it… what we… was it so--you know what,” and he laughed, a low, dark chuckle, “It doesn’t matter. You freed me. I supposed we’re even.”

“Even,” Bruce repeated. There was something slicing into him, a barbed wire, drawing through his ribcage, shredding his lungs. He looked down, and was almost surprised to see only sand, and seawater. How could anything hurt like this, and not leave a mark? “That’s what this was.”

“No,” and Clark finally looked at him, a bare second, before his eyes went to Dick and Alfred. “No, I’m--They’re important to me too, you know that.”

Bruce nodded. “They’ve missed you.”

“Have they.”

“Dick, especially. He was… angry, after you left, and he’s been quieter since. If you were to come by, once in a while, I think he’d like that, very much.”

Clark had the strangest look in his eye, when he finally met Bruce’s eyes, and Bruce memorized him hungrily now, the softness of his gaze, the way his hair rippled in the ocean breeze, the peach-pale corner of his lips, that high, sharp point of his cheekbone that Bruce wanted to trace with his mouth… “Dick would like that, would he.”

“And Alfred. I don’t think either of us appreciate his pancakes quite enough.”

“Dick and Alfred,” Clark said quietly. “That’s why I should come to Gotham.”

“I… yes.”

“And you?” Clark asked, as if _that_ was the question, as if there was any limit Bruce wouldn’t have crossed, hadn’t _already_ crossed, to have Clark in his life, in orbit of his world even: to _have_ Clark. “You wouldn’t mind.”

“You think I. Would… mind.”

“It’s a reasonable question, isn’t it? In light of recent events?”

“Isn’t that." Bruce paused. "Isn’t that the question I should be asking you. That you wouldn’t mind. Being… around me. After what I did.”

“After what you did,” and now it was Clark’s turn to repeat things, a little notch working between his brows. “What exactly does that mean?”

“After I made you… After my second. Wish.”

“To free me?”

Bruce frowned. “No. No… That was my third wish.”

The sea rushed gently over their feet. Clark’s bright red cape snapped in the wind. In the distance, Alfred said something, and Dick laughed.

“Bruce.” Clark stepped towards him, and Bruce’s hand twitched uselessly by his side, as he held himself back, the urge to touch a physical, pressing, consuming need. “Bruce,” Clark whispered, and he curved a broad, warm palm around the side of his face, stroking the thin, soft skin just beneath his eye. “You only made two wishes. The first to save your son, and the second to set me free.”

“No,” Bruce rasped, hoarse, like he’d been screaming, “No, I wished--I wanted--I _wanted_ you, I wanted you in my bed, wanted you to lo- to _want_ me, and then you _were,_ you _did_ \--”

Clark was smiling now, soft and a little sad, but there was a fire dancing in his eyes. “Because I wanted you too. Because I want you too. Bruce. Bruce, you complete fucking headcase, did you think I could live in your house, and see you be you, and not fall desperately in love, have you _met_ yourself?”

“Clark.” And the word came out rough, and his hands were gripping Clark without his permission, holding onto him with vicious, clawing desire, and “Clark,” and then Clark was opening his mouth under Bruce, and they were kissing, bruisingly soft, gentle, like saying goodbye, or hello, or please don’t ever leave me again.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! hit kudos if you liked it.  
> [rebloggable on tumblr here!](https://pasdecoeur.tumblr.com/post/181013639544/a-whole-new-world-chapter-1-pasdecoeur-dcu)  
> come say hi on tumblr [@pasdecoeur](https://pasdecoeur.tumblr.com/)


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